If you were wondering what Microsoft's response would be to the next-generation, conversational Google Assistant that debuted at Google I/O, a job posting may have revealed it: Bing Concierge. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley unearthed a job posting for what Microsoft calls the Bing Concierge Bot, a natural language agent that fulfills tasks on behalf of the user. But while Assistant appears to restrict itself to the Android platform, Microsoft seems to believe Bing Concierge could run on any number of instant-messenger platforms. "In Bing Concierge Bot... we are building a highly intelligent productivity agent that communicates with the user over a conversation platform, such as Skype, Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.," the job listing reads. Why this matters: Just as Google moves on from Google Now, Microsoft appears to be evolving beyond Cortana.

Google this week hosted its annual I/O developers conference, announcing new products that highlight the tech giant's focus on artificial intelligence. Google Translate Product Lead Barak Turovsky lent some content in a post to the company's corporate blog: "The assistant is conversational – an ongoing two-way dialogue between you and Google that understands your world and helps you get things done. It makes it easy to buy movie tickets while on the go, to find that perfect restaurant for your family to grab a quick bite before the movie starts, and then help you navigate to the theater. Turovsky said the company views the current technological landscape as at a "seminal moment. Many of these advances have been thanks to machine learning and artificial intelligence – specifically, areas like natural language processing, voice recognition and translation – and they have helped us build an increasingly useful and assistive experience for users.

Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google IO developer conference highlighted progress in key areas such as Android and especially Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is going main stream, becoming an essential part of platform operating systems and cloud services. As the creator of AlphaGo, the first AI to defeat a human Go player, Google is arguably out in front in AI services. Leveraging AI to confer competitive advantage for its various platforms is the centerpiece of Google's business strategy. My title for this article was meant to be more tongue-in-cheek than alarmist.

Many say that programmatic reached a tipping point in 2015, because for the first time last year, programmatic transactions surpassed non-search digital ad spending. That's an important milestone, but there's still a big gap for marketers who want to automate the ad buying process. The customer journey -- especially for considered purchases -- rarely happens entirely online. Our purchasing habits are not only becoming more digital -- they are becoming more omnichannel. Take the example of buying insurance.

Today at I/O, Google took the wraps off its latest foray into the world of communications: the company announced Allo, a smart messaging app supercharged with machine learning and Google's new Google Assistant service (its answer to Amazon's Alexa), giving users the ability not just to chat to each other with animated graphics and enlarging/shrinking text, but to call in Google (and later other third-party apps) to share media, plan events, buy things, and even think of what to say to each other. The iOS and Android app is being unveiled today, but it will only be live this summer, Google says. If you are a Google news watcher, Allo may not come as a complete surprise: back in December the WSJ reported that the company was working on an AI-based messaging app: this appears to be that very product. The app comes at an interesting time for Google. The company has made a number of attempts at building social products over the years, but products like Google, Wave and Buzz never really caught on at a time when other products like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat have taken off.

Alphabet's ( GOOGL) Google kicked off its I/O developers conference yesterday. While analysts and consumers alike want to hear about developments such as a virtual reality device to rival Facebook's ( FB) Oculus Rift headset and new and improved artificial intelligence software, the unveiling of another new gadget took over the headlines and has the potential to bring in some exciting profits for investors. Google Home is a "smart speaker" designed to compete with the Amazon (AMZN) Echo. The Echo, a voice-intelligent personal assistant, has been one of Amazon's biggest sleeper hits. Building on the sort of technology that powers the Apple (AAPL) iPhone Siri system, the Echo is a touch-free device that can answer questions and perform commands from switching on Spotify to turning on the house lights.

Jefferson Graham visits the Google "Sandbox" at the I/O developer's conference, where futuristic, new technologies are on display. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - The Google I/O conference brings developers--the folks who make apps for phones, computers, TVs and the like--together for a status update on all that Google is up to. The hope is that they'll start creating apps for new technologies being touted. So we spent time at the I/O conference talking to developers about what excites them about Google's future. Google demonstrated a new way of mapping, using a tablet to monitor the insides of buildings, at its Sandbox area of I/O, devoted to the newest technologies being introduced, and the exhibit easily drew the longest lines and biggest crowds.

Google is launching a messaging app, and it's going to start butting into your conversations. Allo, as the app has been named, was unveiled at the opening event of the company's I/O developer conference in San Francisco. It works similarly to most other messaging apps, but also has a built-in AI assistant. Google's assistant scans your incoming messages, so it can suggest good responses. It can do this for regular texts or picture messages, and seemed impressively smart in on-stage demonstrations.

That's the argument made by a group of Danish researchers who released a data set on nearly 70,000 users of the popular dating website. The researchers used an automated tool called a "scraper" that captures parts of a webpage--a possible violation of the website's terms of use. These users had answered questions on intimate topics like drug use and sexual preferences. The researchers took no steps to deidentify the data set when they released it, despite it being possible to reidentify many of the profiles. When the researchers were called out about this lapse on Twitter, one of them shrugged it off with the flip statement "Data is already public."

Maybe the reason why Google isn't giving a formal name to its personal assistant software is that it's more than just one thing. Introduced at I/O this week is a new Android Awareness API that bundles all the sensor data from your smartphone or other Android device and presents it to apps, which can then act on that input to automatically assist you. "You can use this information to build more assistive and aware applications," says Google's Bhavik Singh, product manager of the Awareness API. He offers a number of scenarios where smart assistive apps could help: projecting the day's weather forecast on the nearest Chromecast TV, beaming out traffic alerts to your Google Home speaker to avoid being late for a meeting, or tagging photos with weather and activity data as well as location. In order to be so savvy, however, apps will need access to seven different parameters: the time and place (both type of place and precise location), your physical activity, any nearby wireless beacons, whether or not you have headphones connected, and the weather.